Easton Zinfandel Amador County 2006
I’m looking for wines for Thanksgiving, so I’m looking for American. There’s no grape more American than Zinfandel, and it just so happens that Zins can be a decent match for the Thanksgiving meal. The “Easton†label draws my eye because in addition to being a wine geek I’m also a baseball geek, and Easton is the brand name for the most popular aluminum baseball bat. I turn the bottle to read the label and the wine is from Plymouth, California. Plymouth, as in Plymouth Rock (yes, I know the Mayflower stopped at the Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts … work with me here). Do I even need to move on to the tasting notes? It’s already a pickup for Thanksgiving, for nothing more than a conversation piece.
As it turns out, the wine is fabulous with the turkey and most of the trimmings. Though it has open, forward flavors on the palate, it’s not over the top but rather on the soft side, at least as far as Zinfandels go. The nose tempts with bright raspberry, blackberry, plum, and earthy aromas, with a touch of tar. In the mouth you get flavors of ripe blackberry, black raspberry, black cherry, blueberry, a spicy component, and hints of earth, tobacco, black pepper. The finish is only a touch hot with tar and ripe tannins dominating. The texture is smooth – almost creamy – the acidity is medium-low to medium, the tannins are a bit under medium. The wine works with the dark meat, and is just soft enough to compliment the white meat as long as you pour on the chestnut gravy and/or take a bite of stuffing with it. It surprisingly did not spoil the taste in my mouth after chowing down brussel sprouts – which is pretty impressive. Overall it is a fine choice for the Thanksgiving table. At $15.99, it’s a fair value.
a-7 t-8 b-8 fc-8 v-8 ~ 89 Points
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